The 10 Most Popular Vanity Fair Stories in 2014

There’s nothing more fun than debating the future of journalism—except maybe having a full body wax, doing your taxes, or standing in line for Space Mountain in a wintry mix. But whether you’re in camp I Like to Get Newspaper Ink On My Pants, or camp I Have the iPad Edition, all we can say is, it was a good year for juicy, scandalous longreads (and airplanes) here at Vanity Fair. So if you missed any of these stories, print them out in size 16 or Instapaper them for later, because there’s definitely some dinner party conversation fodder in this list.

Beverly Johnson, the first black woman to ever appear on the cover of Vogue, recalls going to Bill Cosby’s home to work on her lines for a guest role on The Cosby Show. After Cosby handed her a cup of coffee, “I knew by the second sip of the drink Cosby had given me that I’d been drugged—and drugged good,” wrote Johnson.

After over a decade of silence, Monica Lewinsky addressed the humiliation and bullying she experienced in the wake of her 1998 affair with President Bill Clinton: “It is time to stop tiptoeing around my past—and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story.”

In her cover story for the November 2014 issue of Vanity Fair, Jennifer Lawrence speaks candidly about her leaked nude photos for the first time. “I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years,” Lawrence told Kashner, “It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he's going to look at you.”

When Sam Simon, one of the creators of The Simpsons, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2012, he rushed to spend his fortune on the causes closest to his heart, from rescuing grizzly bears to raising money for vegan food banks. Having outlived his doctor’s six-month sentence, Simon is a man on a mission.

Mark Seal reported on the divorce of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng—and that infamous note Deng wrote about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, “Whatever why I’m so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good…” But we won’t spill all the details here.

Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch was on everyone’s nightstand this year—but does a bestseller equate to literary prowess? “A book like The Goldfinch doesn’t undo any clichés—it deals in them,” said Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review. “It coats everything in a cozy patina of ‘literary’ gentility.”

William Langewiesche revisits the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009, which killed 228 passengers. In an age when airplanes are mostly flying themselves, Langewiesche examined the role of human error in the crash, and used the black box recordings from the flight to recreate the tragedy—it’s a chilling read.